The use of networks is constantly evolving. Network applications such as email, instant messaging, and Web browsers have been combined and adapted in ways that allow users to communicate ever more effectively with people around the globe. Further, users are increasingly relying on mobile devices to interact with these network applications. Mobile devices have become ever more powerful due to the availability of low-power, high performance processors, inexpensive memory, and increasingly available and affordable mobile data networks.
There are many situations where a mobile device may interact with a service located on the Web. The data exchanged with these services may be particular to the user and/or the mobile device of the user. An example of user-specific data includes contact information, photos, and music. As users increasingly depend on mobile devices to carry personal data such as this, such devices may utilize network data backup and restore. In another example, cell phones and similar devices have taken advantage of remote device configuration and management systems in order to more easily configure the devices in accordance with the needs of a particular network. These network device configuration services often do not deal with private data or purchased content, and therefore may be tied to a specific device without regards to who is currently using the device.
As far as providing device-specific data, a network service may need access to a particular device type or configuration. In such a case, systems may use an identifier such as the International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) to determine this data. In contrast, services that deal with private user data (or other important data, such as purchased content) may require that a particular user be identified and/or authenticated. Some situations (e.g., media sharing, or data synchronization between multiple devices) may require the pairing to the actual user (i.e. user's phone number). In addition, to be able to e.g. make a Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) call (or other data-channel-based communication), a person initializing the call needs to know the receiver's VoIP address (or username etc.) to be able to place the call, even if the receiver's phone number is already known.
In order for these and other similar systems to work, there has to be a pairing between a user subscription to a particular service and devices that access the service. An example of pairing between a subscription and a device is the assignment of a telephone number to a cell phone. In that case, the subscriptions are generally maintained by mobile network operators, and only network operators can automatically set up a pairing between the subscription (e.g., telephone number) and user's device. A service external to the network operator generally cannot access this network operator data. An external service may be able to utilize a manually-entered pairing between a device and its phone number, such as by having the user enter a phone number on the device or the Web to identify the subscription. However, in such a case, when changing to a new device the account information needs to be input again.
To provide the best possible user experience and seamless usage of multiple devices, it would be desirable if a pairing between devices and service subscriptions is automatically formed independently of the service subscription provider network. Further, a change of device should be automatically detected when accessing such a provider network-independent service.